(Sharecast News) - Graphene nanoplatelets producer and supplier Directa Plus announced on Monday that its subsidiary Setcar has signed a contract to supply environmental services to GSP Offshore - part of the Romanian oil services group GSP.
The AIM-traded firm said it was the second major contract win for Setcar since Directa Plus completed the acquisition of 51% of the company on 26 November.
It said the value of the contract to Setcar was estimated to be around €0.7m (£0.59m) per annum over a period of seven years, for a total value of €5m.
Directa Plus explained that Setcar provides "market leading" environmental services to the oil and gas industry, by combining its historic experience in environmental services and remediation with Directa Plus' proprietary graphene-based 'Grafysorber' adsorbent.
Setcar would provide a range of environmental services, both offshore and onshore, including the treatment of oil contaminated water and soil, residual drilling fluids treatment and the cleaning of oil storage tanks, the board explained.
It said Grafysorber technology would play an important role in increasing the efficiency of oil removal, while decreasing the overall treatment costs of contaminated water on the offshore rigs, support vessels and in harbour.
The new contract formed part of a larger framework agreement between GSP Offshore and another commercial partner of Directa Plus, the Romanian oil and gas group OMV Petrom.
Under the eight-year contract awarded in July, GSP would provide integrated offshore services, installations, and equipment for all the offshore facilities of OMV Petrom.
"This contract is an exciting win, demonstrating that Directa Plus is delivering on its strategy in our key environmental vertical," said founder and chief executive officer Giulio Cesareo.
"We are confident that we can continue to deliver on Setcar's promise in 2020."
Cesareo said the company's strategy was to partner with "outstanding" innovative businesses to use graphene technology to improve the performance of products and services with proven applications and markets.
"This allows Directa Plus to capture as much of the value chain as possible.
"The Setcar investment and this contract win is a great example of how this works - validating an entirely new process designed around our Grafysorber graphene technology, which we can then take to market globally.
"We are confident this is the best possible mechanism to capture success - acting early, presenting new innovative solutions, getting feedback from important customers, and iterating as fast as possible."
At 1100 GMT, shares in Directa Plus were down 1.33% at 74p.